Homer, Alaska

Homer is a veritable paradise on a sunny day. I have been to Homer 4 times but this last trip was the first one where i was able to experience nice weather for an extended period of time. We made the trip at the end of May. I was pessimistic about it because at the time we were going the Kenai Peninsula was having the largest fire in the nation, at about 200,000 acres. The smoke had been bad, and at the same time a huge storm was blowing through Alaska.

The Homer Spit just before sunset.  The spit is 4.5 miles long.

 We were able to walk right onto the beach from the backyard of our room at the Alaska Beach House.

The view from the back yard is fantastic.

The storm worked in our favor, and even though we were freaking out about snow at 1,500 feet at the end of May the rain it brought with it helped put out the majority of that massive fire. So although it was unseasonably cold in Homer, the weather improved after the first half of our trip and the air was clear.

We stayed at a place called the Alaska Beach House. It was located in a fantastic location with incredible views of the spit and Kachemak Bay. From the back yard we could walk right down to the beach and walk along it for miles.

The multi-level decking that led down to the beach.

The Beach House has a few rooms in a main house but has a larger separate room that is build directly on the bluff in the back yard.

Our room had a fun and well done nautical theme.

The bathroom was small, just like a boat, but neat. The shower, though, was plenty big and had a lot of hot water.

Although Homer is world famous as a fishing village, it was originally founded as a coal mining town. The Cook Inlet Coal Fields Company built the first infrastructure at the townsite, but the settlement got it's name from a man named Homer Pennock. Mr. Pennock was a gold mining company promoter. Gold mining never took off, but there was a large Chromite mine near Seldovia, across the bay.

The tide goes out at sunset

A nunatak as a storm breaks up at sunset.

The same nunatak on a clear evening reveal many more higher up.

There were a pair of nesting bald eagles right next to our house. They were constantly out looking for food and the local crows never gave them a break.

Here the eagle has two crows on it's wing and another chasing it. That's two crows.

I really couldn't help it. The weather kept changing so much on the mountains i just had to keep taking pictures of them.

So what do you do in Homer? Well, the spit is certainly fun to explore. There are a lot of art galleries and shops. There is some good seafood to be found, and even a winery. For bigger excursions there is plenty of deep sea fishing to do, flight tours, and bear viewing.

You can also use Homer as a jumping off point to visit the beautiful town of Seldovia or Halibut Cove. I'll be writing about Halibut Cove in an future post, but you can read about Seldovia HERE.

This is the beach at the "old" townsite. At low tide you can walk pretty far out onto the sand.

Near the old town is a museum with a boardwalk that goes out into one of the sloughs and marshes.

No trip to Homer is complete without a visit to the Salty Dawg Saloon.

It's highly flammable but surrounded by water on three sides. There is a lot to peruse on the walls and ceilings including cool paintings of pirates, ships on stormy seas, big crabs and even a human skull.

The pool hall is covered in life preservers and a King of Beers lamp that reminded me of some low class Blade Runner blimp.

A partly sunny day makes cool shadows on the glaciers.

The lighthouse.

The freak snowstorm not only helped put out the Funny River Fire but it made the mountains particularly photogenic after the storm broke up.

The Homer Spit leads to some bluffs rimmed with houses. The bluffs have suffered accelerated erosion in the last decade and the city has built an expensive seawall to try and protect property owners form further damage.

From our lodging we were able to explore along the sea wall one afternoon. Here a Bald Eagle is flying over Maree.

A ship sets out.

The rumored "Russian Gypsy Ship" on the Homer Spit. This boat is someone's home. 

Russian or not, the occupants have surrounded themselves in a kind of boat graveyard.

The Altair

The Virginis. Boat graveyards are really cool but i didn't know if you were allowed to wander around or if this was like finding someones property covered in junk cars.

Across the bay from Homer are some formidable icefields that feed all the glaciers on the south side of the bay. I don't know the name of the field but they are separated by a valley from the larger Harding Ice Fields, which feed the Fox River at the head of Kachemak Bay.

This is Part III in my series of posts on the Kachemak Bay area. You can read about the other interesting places in the area by clicking the links below:

Seldovia: An attractive fishing town on the South Side of Kachemak Bay

Red Mountain: A hiking area near Seldovia that looks like SW Colorado

Halibut Cove: An beautiful artists community across the bay

Or see what's beyond Homer: Around Kachemak Bay, Thereabouts